School segregation in the United States
School segregation in the United States was the segregation of students in educational facilities based on their race and ethnicity. While not prohibited from having or attending schools, various minorities were barred from most schools that admitted white students. Segregation was enforced by laws in
U.S. states, primarily in the Southern United States, although segregation could also occur in informal systems or through social expectations and norms in other areas of the country. Segregation laws were met with resistance by Civil Rights activists and began to be challenged in the 1930s in cases that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Segregation continued longstanding exclusionary policies in much of the Southern United States after the Civil War. Jim Crow laws codified segregation. These laws were influenced by the history of slavery and discrimination in the US. Secondary schools for African Americans in the South were called training schools instead of high schools in order to appease racist whites and focused on vocational education. School integration in the United States took place at different times in different areas and often met resistance. After the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which invalidated segregated-schooling laws, school segregation took de facto form. School segregation declined rapidly during the late 1960s and early 1970s as the government became strict on schools' plans to combat segregation more effectively as a result of Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. Voluntary segregation by income appears to have increased since 1990.
Racial segregation has either increased or stayed constant since 1990, depending on which definition of segregation is used. In general, definitions based on the amount of interaction between black and white students show increased racial segregation, while definitions based on the proportion of black and white students in different schools show racial segregation remaining approximately constant. Residential segregation in the United States and school choice, both historically and currently, have had a considerable effect on school segregation. Not only does the current segregation of neighborhoods and schools in the US affect social issues and practices, but it is considered by some to be a factor in the achievement gap between black and white students. Some authors such as Jerry Roziek and Ta-Nehisi Coates highlight the importance of tackling the root concept of racism instead of desegregation efforts that arise as a result of the end of de jure segregation. Along with educational and social outcomes, the average income and occupational aspirations of minority households that are products of segregated schooling have worse outcomes than the products of desegregated schooling.
More than half of students in the United States attend school districts with high concentrations of people of their own ethnicity and about 40% of black students attend schools where 90%-100% of students are non-white. Blacks, "Mongolians", Japanese, Latino, and Native American students were segregated in California. Native American children faced separation from their families and forced assimilation programs at boarding schools. But there were also cases where Native Americans successfully challenged school segregation and won access to public schools.
Historical segregation
Antebellum era
was in New York City in the 18th century. Education during the slave period in the United States was limited. Richard Humphreys, Samuel Powers Emlen Jr, and Prudence Crandall established schools for African Americans in the decades preceding the Civil War.In 1832, Prudence Crandall admitted an African American girl to her all-white Canterbury Female Boarding School in Canterbury, Connecticut, which was the subject of public backlash and protests. She converted the boarding school to one for only African American girls, but Crandall was jailed for her efforts for violating a Black Law. In 1835, an anti-abolitionist mob attacked and destroyed Noyes Academy, an integrated school in Canaan, New Hampshire founded by abolitionists in New England. In 1849, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were allowed under the Constitution of Massachusetts. Emlen Institution was a boarding school for African American and Native American orphans in Ohio and then Pennsylvania. Richard Humphreys bequeathed money to establish the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia. Yale Law School co-founder, judge, and mayor of New Haven David Daggett was a leader in the fight against schools for African Americans and helped block plans for a college for African Americans in New Haven, Connecticut.
Black schools were established by some religious groups and philanthropists to educate African Americans. Oberlin Academy was one of the early schools to integrate. Lowell High School also accepted African American students.
Reconstruction era
The formal segregation of black and white people began following the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877. The United States Supreme Court's Dred Scott v. Sandford decision upheld the denial of citizenship to African Americans and found that descendants of slaves are "so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."Following the American Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified and ended slavery nationwide. The Fourteenth Amendment, guaranteeing equal protection under the law, was ratified in 1868, and citizenship was extended to African Americans. Congress also passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, banning racial discrimination in public accommodations. But in 1883, the Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, finding that discrimination by individuals or private businesses was constitutional.
Jim Crow era
The Dunning School at Columbia University, provided the intellectual underpinning for Jim Crow era discrimination. Segregation continued in de jure form with the passage of Jim Crow laws in the 19th century. The Reconstruction era saw efforts at integration in the South, but were also passed by state legislatures in the South and parts of the lower Midwest and Southwest, segregating public schools. These stated that schools should be separated by race and offer equal amenities, but conditions were far from equal.The constitutionality of Jim Crow laws was upheld in the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which ruled that separate facilities for black and white people were permissible provided that the facilities were of equal quality.New Deal era
enacted housing reforms that focused their benefits on home buying aid to only white Americans. These restrictions in loans further separated black and white neighborhoods, which introduced the long term effects of residential segregation projects on schooling. The boundaries housing projects were intentionally drawn so that black neighborhoods had less access to education and jobs. This depletion of resources led to an increase in poverty rates which broadened academic achievement gaps.The establishment of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 1939 serves as the foundation of the efforts and funding to challenge school segregation. Charles Hamilton Houston initially ran the LDF, and focused heavily on proving that black schools were severely unequal to white schools Eventually, the LDF shifted its leadership to Thurgood Marshall, who became the first director of the LDF and was a leader in significant court battles including Brown v. Board of Education.
Civil Rights era
Plessy v. Ferguson was overturned in 1954, when the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education ended de jure segregation in the United States. The state of Arkansas would experience some of the first successful school integrations below the Mason–Dixon line. In the decade following Brown, the South resisted enforcement of the Court's decision. States and school districts did little to reduce segregation, and schools remained almost completely segregated until 1968, after Congressional passage of civil rights legislation. In response to pressures to desegregate in the public school system, some white communities started private segregated schools, but rulings in Green v. Connally and Runyon v. McCrary prohibited racial discrimination in private schools and revoked IRS-granted non-profit status of schools in violation. Desegregation efforts reached their peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the South transitioned from complete segregation to being the nation's most integrated region.Mexican-American segregation during these eras
While African Americans faced legal segregation in civil society, Mexican Americans often dealt with de facto ''segregation, meaning no federal laws explicitly barred their access to schools or other public facilities, yet they were still separated from white people. The proponents of Mexican-American segregation were often officials who worked at the state and local school level and often defended the creation and sustaining of separate "Mexican schools". Prior to the 1930s, segregation of Mexican children in schools was a rarity. Following the Great Depression, funding from the New Deal and legislation such as the 1934 Sugar Act enabled the creation of segregated schools for Mexican American children in Wyoming. An example of Mexican-American school segregation is from the city of Oxnard, California. According to the district records, the schools and neighborhoods in Oxnard were segregated based on ethnicity. The number of Latino migrants in Oxnard was climbing, causing overcrowding in the schools, which triggered local officials to "solve" this issue by creating a "school-within-a-school" form of segregation, and eventually by establishing a separate school for Latino students. School segregation occurred due to the residential segregation that was also present in Oxnard. By placing restrictive policies and covenants on properties, officials in Oxnard were able to keep Latino residents in a separate neighborhood from the "American", which provided a justification for segregating the schools. The segregation of Mexican children occurred throughout much of the U.S. West. During the Depression era in Wyoming, the segregation of Mexican children—whether they were US citizens or not—mirrored Jim Crow laws. The segregation of Mexicans also took place in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, and Texas. The Blackwell School in Texas is one of the few remaining formerly de facto segregated Mexican school buildings.Parents of Mexican-American students challenged school segregation themselves and won by boycotting the newly segregated school and taking the school board to court, as happened with 75 students in the historic 1931 case commonly known as the Lemon Grove 'Incident'''. The Lemon Grove case paved the way for another historic case in 1946, when a group of 5 Mexican-American parents challenged Westminster school district in federal court, successfully proving that the segregation of Mexican-Americans in public schools in California was unconstitutional, and setting a precedent for future cases.
Parents of both African-American and Mexican-American students also challenged school segregation in coordination with civil rights organizations such as the NAACP, ACLU, and LULAC. Both groups challenged discriminatory policies in court, with varying success. The NAACP initially challenged graduate and professional school segregation asserting that desegregation at this level would result in the least backlash and opposition by whites.